Blazes: Coordination Analysis for Distributed Programs

Distributed consistency is perhaps the most discussed topic in distributed systems today. Coordination protocols can ensure consistency, but in practice they cause undesirable performance unless used judiciously. Scalable distributed architectures avoid coordination whenever possible, but under-coordinated systems can exhibit behavioral anomalies under fault, which are often extremely difficult to debug. This raises significant challenges for distributed system architects and developers. In this paper we present Blazes, a cross-platform program analysis framework that (a) identifies program locations that require coordination to ensure consistent executions, and (b) automatically synthesizes application-specific coordination code that can significantly outperform general-purpose techniques. We present two case studies, one using annotated programs in the Twitter Storm system, and another using the Bloom declarative language.Comment: Updated to include additional materials from the original technical report: derivation rules, output stream label

The Meaning of Collective Terrorist Threat: Understanding the Subjective Causes of Terrorism Reduces Its Negative Psychological Impact

This article hypothesized that the possibility to construct intellectual meaning of a terrorist attack (i.e., whether participants can cognitively understand why the perpetrators did their crime) reduces the negative psychological consequences typically associated with increased terrorist threat. Concretely, the authors investigated the effect of intellectual meaning (induced by providing additional information about potential economic, cultural, and historical reasons for the terrorist attack) on perceived terrorist threat and associated emotional well-being. Study 1 revealed that pictures of terrorist attacks elicited less experienced terrorist threat when they were presented with background information about the terrorists’ motives (meaning provided) rather than without additional background information (no meaning provided). Study 2 replicated this effect with a different manipulation of terrorist threat (i.e., newspaper article) and clarified the underlying psychological process: Participants in the high terror salience condition with meaning provided experienced less terrorist threat and thus more emotional well-being in the face of crisis than participants in the high terror salience condition without meaning provided. Theoretical and practical implications in the context of psychological health and mass media effects are discussed

The Irish in Bristol, 1938-1985

The main focus of this thesis is the Irish population of Bristol from 1938 to 1985. Up to now, the twentieth century Bristol Irish have been largely absent from the historical and sociological discourse on both Bristol and the Irish in Britain. This thesis seeks to address their absence as well as to locate the experiences of the Bristol Irish within the context of the Irish in Britain through comparisons to similar studies conducted in other British cities. In addition, it seeks to ascertain to what degree the Bristol Irish have integrated or been assimilated into the native populace.It centres on several key issues such as the lived experience of the Bristol Irish, as well as the homogeneity of the migration process and the Irish experience in twentieth century Bristol. This necessitated an in-depth investigation relating to residential patterns in the city and the predominance of traditional Irish occupational groupings such as nursing for females and building work for males. It was also necessary to ascertain the importance of Irish spaces in the city. These include pubs, clubs and associations as well as the role of the Catholic Church. This was achieved through several strands of investigation, which included several types of primary and secondary sources, as well as both quantitative and qualitative analysis. As we will see in Chapter Four, Bristol’s Irish population have not always had the same level of cultural organisation as exists in British cities with higher Irish populations such as London and Birmingham. As a result of this, individual experiences became vital to the research. In fact, several historians have argued that the true details of migration can only be revealed by the migrants themselves. To this end, new interviews were undertaken with Irish-born people living in Bristol contacted through friend and family links as well as the snowballing technique. This allowed for a qualitative analysis of individuals’ experiences of migration, housing, employment as well as social and cultural life in Bristol. This included an examination of the extent to which the Bristol Irish have integrated or been assimilated into the native populace.This original material was supplemented by previously overlooked archival material which casts light on the experiences of Irish nurses and building labourers in post-war Bristol. These data also revealed further detail on the migration process during the Second World War, before any of the research participants came to Bristol. In addition to this, a quantitative investigation of two local newspapers allowed for an analysis of public opinion in Bristol on key points in twentieth century Anglo-Irish relations

Basic definition and properties of Bessel multipliers

This paper introduces the concept of Bessel multipliers. These operators are defined by a fixed multiplication pattern, which is inserted between the Analysis and synthesis operators. The proposed concept unifies the approach used for Gabor multipliers for arbitrary analysis/synthesis systems, which form Bessel sequences, like wavelet or irregular Gabor frames. The basic properties of this class of operators are investigated. In particular the implications of summability properties of the symbol for the membership of the corresponding operators in certain operator classes are specified. As a special case the multipliers for Riesz bases are examined and it is shown that multipliers in this case can be easily composed and inverted. Finally the continuous dependence of a Bessel multiplier on the parameters (i.e. the involved sequences and the symbol in use) is verified, using a special measure of similarity of sequences.Comment: 15 pages; Paper was cut from 27 to 15 pages and got a new titl

A class of Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras

We consider a natural generalisation of the class of hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebras. We describe in detail the conditions under which these algebras are Lorentzian. We also construct their fundamental weights, and analyse whether they possess a real principal so(1,2) subalgebra. Our class of algebras include the Lorentzian Kac-Moody algebras that have recently been proposed as symmetries of M-theory and the closed bosonic string.Comment: 40 pages TeX, 5 eps-figure

Treatment-resistant major depression: Rationale for NMDA receptors as targets and nitrous oxide as therapy

Major depressive disorder (MDD) remains a huge personal and societal encumbrance. Particularly burdensome is a virulent subtype of MDD, treatment resistant major depression (TMRD), which afflicts 15–30% of MDD patients. There has been recent interest in N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) as targets for treatment of MDD and perhaps TMRD. To date, most pre-clinical and clinical studies have focused on ketamine, although psychotomimetic and other side effects may limit ketamine’s utility. These considerations prompted a recent promising pilot clinical trial of nitrous oxide, an NMDAR antagonist that acts through a mechanism distinct from that of ketamine, in patients with severe TRMD. In this paper, we review the clinical picture of TRMD as a subtype of MDD, the evolution of ketamine as a fast-acting antidepressant, and clinical and basic science studies supporting the possible use of nitrous oxide as a rapid antidepressant